High Cost of Textbooks
Do you think your textbooks are too expensive? According to NPR’s morning addition, some states agree, and they’re doing something about it.
More than a dozen states are considering laws that would restrict price increases for college textbooks. With many books now costing more than $100, college students and their families are facing huge bills on top of tuition costs.
You can listen to the story here.
I'm Chad Boeninger and I write this blog for the students and faculty of Ohio University. I cover business research issues, databases and other resources, current business trends and topics, and much more.
July 27th, 2006 at 11:00 am
Thompson Learning recently launched iChapters where students (and anyone) can purchase & immediately download digital copies of major textbooks for about 25-50% of the cost of a new hard copy. Also– and this is the best part (IMHO)– students can buy chapters of these texts for as low as $1.99. When I was a student, it always irked me when I had to buy a text & then only used 1/3 of the chapters.
Right now there are about 300 titles available, but this number is growing. (However, these 300 titles represent the ones that historically are the most used & purchased by students.) BTW, these are all the latest editions too.
I used to work for Amazon.com, and when we launched the used book store, we saw huge growth in the used college textbook market. After all, college students are always trying to recoup $$ by selling their used texts. I think this has the potential to trump that success. College students are, rightfully, very price sensitive, and this site really addresses that issue.
September 3rd, 2006 at 10:46 pm
As an Asian student studying abroad I buy my books in China and work with them at University. Same books, totally different price…